BRE IP16/12 PDF

INTRO DUCTION

The increased use of wood in UK construction as an environmentally friendly and renewable material depends on the provision of information on its durability and service life. Traditionally, the design of durable wooden components and structures has been based on experience and adherence to good building practice, sometimes formalised as prescriptive rules. There is now a move towards specifying the performance of components or structure in quantitative terms.

The development of performance-based design methods for durability requires that models are available to predict performance in a quantitative and probabilistic format. The relationship between performance during testing and in service needs to be quantified in statistical terms and the resulting predictive models need to be calibrated to provide a realistic measure of service life, including a defined acceptable risk of nonconformity.